[Poll] Are you a software engineer/developer?

I’m a UX/product designer, so still fitting into the trend of many collectors working in tech. Lots of engineers seem to collect but I wonder if there are any other product designers out there?

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Maybe not the answer you were expecting, but the most useful tool I’ve ever come across when coding for over 20 years has to be git, hands down, no questions asked. Even though I use it almost everyday, sometimes I am still in awe of what it is capable of and how many times it has saved my butt.

Edit: as far as tools go, I mostly use tools I’ve made myself, originally in Java but now moreso in Python. I’ve mainly used them to scrape PSA pop reports back in the day when I submitted through Ludkins, which meant I got my grades a few weeks/months earlier. Now I mostly use my scripts to track prices on cardmarket.

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Amen to this. I do web dev 8+ hours a day and think about work problems, brainstorm ideas, etc, constantly in my off time. I’ve tried and failed to do side projects several times over the last few years. Once I’m done with work, I just want to do something that doesn’t feel like work.

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For my day job I moved from software engineer to DevOps/cybersecurity/pentesting so I almost never write code for work. I’ve found that to be a nice balance, all the coding I do these days is for personal projects. Mostly Pokemon related stuff :joy:

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I can agree with this. I use git for everything I possibly can. I use it for code, notes, keeping copies of forum posts, license keys, research, you name it :slight_smile: The only thing I haven’t found a way to store in git in a clean way is Excel docs

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Haha, same here. It’s very rare that I create a new directory without initializing it as a repository.

Excel files are tricky, indeed, as are most other ‘binary’ formats. I know of some git plugins that can unpack these files into human readable ones for diffing purposes, but since data in Excel can basically be anywhere in any number of sheets, I’m not sure if those diffs are very useful if you have a large number of changes.

For that reason I’ve mostly moved away from Excel and I usually store my data either in a database or some human readable format such as csv or json. The downside is of course that I then have to create some script to generate graphs myself, since I can no longer rely on Excel to do that, but at least I’m sure that every piece of data is processed in the same way and that I don’t have any rogue cells whose formulas differ from all the other ones. :sweat_smile:

Interesting to read about your job! My PhD thesis was on software security, and I was also a TA for a cyber security course for a few years, so I’m quite familiar with those things. Although maybe not so much anymore, since it has been a few years. :grin:

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What’s data science/analytics like? What do you do on a day to day basis? I’d like to aim for software engineering but since it looks pretty hard to get my foot in the door in the first place, might as well keep my options open.

“Data science” feels like an umbrella term to describe anything data related under the sun – you’ll find that the type of work across various companies + roles will vary drastically. Maybe more effective to ask yourself what kind of activities you enjoy (modelling, implementing methods in bleeding edge papers, analytics + dashboard, … the list goes on…), and dig into a specific aspect of data.

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As mentioned, “data science” is a very broad term. Generally speaking, its concerned with the storage, analysis, visualization and interpretation of (typically) large datasets. In contrast, software engineering is more about the development of modular functions that fit together and incrementally build to a complex program that satisfies the needs of the client… and then going back and fixing bugs and iterating.

The thing I like about data science is that it often requires knowledge that extends beyond compsci. A background in statistics is very helpful. Depending in where you work there will be domain knowledge that is also very helpful. It could be finance, economics, particle physics, quantum computing, health, AI, supply chains -really anything. In my case it’s genetics and molecular biology which is also something I am really into and studied deeply.

As far as “what you do” in the field, it will be anything from curating data to running existing statistical or computational tools (or building your own) to visualization. It’s right in the name, its more of a “science” ie. processes of research and discovery of knowledge than “engineering” ie. the process of applying existing knowledge to build a complex system

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now hit echo “Wake up Neo” and you’re officially in the Matrix.

This is so true. I’ve worked as a developer for about 10 years and it always drives me insane when, during an interview, people want to know what you do outside of work to continue to build your skills or what your side projects are.

Like I’ll tell you what I’m doing, I’m building Pokemon card spreadsheets and assembling mechanical keyboards and trying not to think about work, that’s what I’m doing you giant troll.

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Backend engineer here – well I am a CS grad student working at a startup and doing big tech post-grad. My background is specifically infrastructure/compilers but I enjoy web and algo (pecifically options trading) dev a lot. I actually started programming ~5 years ago Gameboy modding but haven’t done any of that in a while.

A resource I haven’t seen in this thread that has been pretty helpful for me is JPN-API which is nearly identical to the API of pokemontcg.io.

I’ve been working on a handful of TCG focused side-projects the past few months including: card classification (take images, find the cards, find the likely card using one-shot learning, estimate condition), automating eBay related tasks, and auction discovery. I’m tying these sub-systems together through an inventory management system but that’s very WIP.

Would love to see if anyone has been working on similar things!

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I recently started working on a database, my aim is to have every single English + Japanese card in the TCG :slight_smile: That’s including errors and cameos. The eventual goal is that I’ll be able to generate a full list of existing cards for any given Pokemon

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Right now, the tcgfish app is on app store, you can scan the cards and get the market value. The next step would be to scan the card and add it to portfolio. I’m working on this step by step, sorry for the long wait…

ideally it would be scanning the card → automatically goes to portfolio within seconds. Website portfolio is under development as well.

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Are you aggregating the db yourself or using some existing db as the foundation?

What I have been doing is taking existing dbs from pokemontcg.io and JPN-API, caching them locally, and then writing “patches” for cards they are missing. By doing patches, rather than saving everything locally and modifying, I am able to keep my data up to date for new sets / cards.

However, images aren’t include in this so might difficult if you’re trying to have all of those in your search as well. Happy to chat more about this offline too!

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I’ve tried it out and this is really cool. Are you planning on exposing the API for card lookup or having it only available in your portfolio management tool?

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I’ve been building it myself from scratch and manually inputting all of the data. I’m not very far along but I will definitely look at that API to see if it’s easier to build off of that. I’m using a MariaDB (MySQL equivalent) database to store everything :slight_smile:

Thanks, are you mentioning the camera scanner API to recognize the graded card?

Totally Possible, right now it’s only around 97% accuracy. but with high quality pictures, it can go up to 98%, still not satisfied yet, still improving it every 2-3 days. the rest of the 1.5% is sometimes it matches multiple cards, and the last 1.5% is basically decided by the image, can’t do anything if the image is blurry.

Also, when you scanned your graded card with the app, how’s the speed on your side? is it fast under Wi-Fi?

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sounds like I’m the only one storing most of my stuff locally on hard drives… :frowning:

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Beep. Boop. Beep Boop Beep. :computer:

giphy-20

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